Divide between rich and poor grows in LA County

Poverty continues to plague Los Angeles County more than other places in the country and the county's poor increasingly are dragging the middle class down with them, according to a report released Tuesday.

In L.A. County, 15 percent of people live below poverty. That means they survive on less than $11,000 a year for a single person and $22,000 for a family of four. Nationally, that number is 13 percent.

For Latinos in L.A. County, it jumps to 20 percent, according to the report by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

L.A. County fares even worse, comparably, when looking at the population of "working poor" - those with household incomes of less than $44,000 a year for a family of four. From 2000 to 2008, 36 to 40 percent of the county's population was considered working poor, averaging nearly 6 percentage points higher than the state as a whole, and 7.5 percentage points higher than the nation.

Little improvement

Ten years after releasing a broad report shedding light on the condition of the county's poor, the United Way has seen little improvement. And they have seen some statistics get worse.

"In the long term we have had a problem with slippage at the bottom, but increasingly we are also seeing a slippage in the middle," said Manuel Pastor, a USC economist and author of the report's forward.

"Ten years ago, when the United Way launched this study, it was a tale of two cities. The image was the bottom was falling and the top was rising. One of the central messages to occur now is that if you don't do something about the bottom, you are going to end up with a missing middle class," he continued.

The top one percent of wage earners in the county saw their salaries increase from approximately $90 an hour in 1988 to approximately $150 an hour

in 2008, but the median worker saw his income fall nearly $2an hour as adjusted for inflation, according to the report.

"Think about it," Pastor said. "If someone at the lower end of the economic spectrum is desperate for a job it is going to have an impact on your wage."

The trend existed before the economy turned south, although the recession has only exacerbated the situation, according to the report's authors.

"If you look at the numbers pre-recession, we weren't making much progress," Pastor said.

Job growth wiped out

By 2008 and 2009, all job growth from the previous decade had been wiped out, according to the report.

The unemployment rate for half the decade was below 6percent. It since has rocketed to more than twice that.

That has created immediate challenges for programs to serve the county's poor.

Demand for food stamps in the county has jumped, according to Shirley Christiansen of Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services.

Operators of the food bank at St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Hacienda Heights have seen the increase as well.

Last year, 250-260 families visited the food bank each week. This year, that number has grown to 360, according to Bob McKennon, who helps run the food bank.

"Most of the people who come out are families, the working poor," he said. "Many of these people were working for low wages and both parents were working. And so if one loses their job, it really puts a strain."

Still, recession aside, attrition in the manufacturing and information - news, movies and publishing - sectors has been happening for the past decade. The number of jobs in manufacturing dropped by 36percent over the past decade.

Beyond wages, the middle class is being hit by concerns previously reserved for the county's poor, according to Elise Buik, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

"Issues that we thought were isolated to the working poor are now moving to the middle class - excessive rent burden, static wages, declining or uncertain health care," Buik said.

Housing prices have come down because of the bubble, but for the first time the middle class is being hit by rents that have increased faster than wages, according to the report. More people are paying one-third of their income on rent than the previous decade - 57 percent in 2008 from 50 percent in 2000.

The report's conclusions come despite a decade of efforts by the United Way to close the gap and reduce the number of poor and working poor by improving access to education, housing and health care.

The organization and county have seen some successes in this regard. On average, test scores in the county are up

for all grades, the homeless population has been reduced and children have greater access to health care, according to the report.

"Where we paid attention, we made some improvements," Pastor said.

From 1999 to 2008, API test scores in the county's five largest school districts have increased 40.7 among elementary schools, 33.3 percent among middle schools and 26.6 among high schools.

The number of L.A. County residents who complete college also has increased since 2000, among all races. In 2008, 45percent of whites had a bachelor's degree or higher compared with 38 percent in 2000. Significantly fewer Latinos had bachelor's degrees in 2008.

At 10 percent, nonetheless, it marked an increase from 7 percent in 2000.

The percentage of children with health care coverage has increased from 80 percent in 2008 to 93 percent in 2009.

The county graduation rate, however, has remained at 60percent for the past decade, far below the national average of 70 percent.

Making more improvements requires greater collaboration on the part of the public and private sectors, the report concludes.

Recent studies have concluded improving conditions for the poor in a particular city or region results in overall economic growth for that area, Pastor said.

"We have to get businesses to understand that helping the poor is not just the right thing to do. It is good for the economy and business," Buik said following the release of the report before 300 civic leaders in Los Angeles.

"Today I saw that with the (economic) downturn there is an urgency and openness to work together differently," she said. "A decade ago I didn't see that kind of readiness to tackle these issues together."